Plus, in Romania, the market was not that developed. The only mandatory insurance was the one for your car, and people bought from time to time the life insurance, or, if they were really rich, the one for their house.

And it still has issues growing. There may be many reasons for that: maybe people don’t have the money to protect themselves against real threats, maybe they try to solve things together instead of calling in a third party…etc.

Personally, I am happy that in Romania the insurance market is not great (you will see why by the end of the article):

A while after high school, I was going to discover the “insurance paradise” in France. They have insurances for everything: sport events, your phone, your tv, your kid, your way to work, etc. The industry is so developed, that even kids know what it means now.

So why is insurance bad for our planet? Just take a look at this interview:

Meaning that the reason people actually buy insurances is because they want to have a new phone/TV/camera etc every 6 months, that people would rather take advantage of insurances, instead of paying from their own pockets, etc.

I agree – there are cases where you need that, for example if your apartment was broken in. But on that point, some friends already admitted putting on the stolen goods lists more than the real thing, only to be sure they would get some reimbursement from the insurance company. Another example: if you take a credit in France, you can choose to pay around 10€ a month for an unemployment insurance; and if by chance you are laid-off, the insurance will pay your credit during 2 years !!! Is that an encouragement to leave your job or what?

So from my point of view it’s a market that leads to consumption, drives people to lie more and more, plus pushes people apart. For example for all errors that our kids do, we cannot say anymore “oh it’s not too bad, he’s just a kid” – now we will say “please give me your insurance, thank you, goodbye”.

I am a bit surprised to see that at the moment there is no study on how insurance is affecting consumption – as far as Google search can tell, I didn’t find any relevant documents on the topic on a large scale – so if you find anything, please share 🙂